By Bill Leonard
Then, John the Baptizer stormed out of the wilderness, demanding repentance of everyone. Jesus showed up, seeking baptism, but John hesitates. Jesus insists and under muddy Jordan he goes, taking all God’s people with him.
Now, New Year’s marks time for returning to where the church itself began: faith in Jesus Christ and baptism into his body, the church. When old institutions won’t hold and new ones are a long time coming, we go back where we belong, to the river, remembering our past and finding hope for the future.
Early Christians made the most of baptism. Tertullian described the second-century practice: “When we are going to enter the water, but a little before in the presence of the congregation and under the hands of the president, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil, his pomp, and his angels. Hereupon we are thrice immersed, making a somewhat ampler pledge than the Lord has appointed in the Gospel. Then, when we are taken up, we taste first of all a mixture of milk and honey. And from that day we refrain from a daily bath for a whole week.”
Those early disciples surely had an odor of sanctity about them, yet they wanted to hold on to that high moment as long as possible. The Didache (110 CE) set the norm: immersion in cold, running water, with options of “other water” (ugh) or, when water was scarce, simply pouring it on the believer’s head.
In the early Christian centuries, converts were baptized naked. (Now that would perk up a morning worship service!) Once out of the water they put on white robes as public testimony to their transforming commitment.
These days the question, “Does baptism save you?” — long-debated by American Protestants — seems less pertinent than asking, “Does baptism mean anything at all?”
For many inside and outside the church, baptism seems neither powerful nor important, an anachronistic ritual of a bygone era. Most churches do not gather at the river anymore. We have taken it inside and toned it down considerably. Some faith-communities use minimal amounts of water. Others dip the entire body into heated, fiberglass baptisteries full of fresh water, no muss, no fuss.
If we are going to immerse people, perhaps we should return to the river, at least occasionally, with the congregation gathered all around, receiving new Christian sisters and brothers with open arms, drying them off and welcoming them home. Of course there are problems of time, space and pollution. If we baptized folks in certain rivers, we’d have to give them tetanus shots immediately or send them straight to heaven.
But regardless of mode, baptism itself is an act of faith, a celebration of grace and an enactment of the word of God. Faith and baptism are linked inseparably; all Christian communions affirm that unity.
Faith keeps baptism from becoming a purely magic ritual, while baptism keeps faith from deteriorating into a purely individualistic experience, uniting us with Christian community. Amid continuing periods of personal depression, Martin Luther clung to his baptism. In baptism, he said, it is not simply that we have chosen Christ, but that Christ has chosen us.
Baptism remains the symbol of liberation in Christ, a promise of freedom to all who believe. Nowhere is this more evident than in slavery time in the American South. In 1807, a Kentucky slave woman named Winnie was disciplined by the Forks of Elkhorn Baptist Church where she was a member for saying that “she once thought it her duty to serve her mistress and master, but since the Lord had converted her [since her baptism] she had never believed that any Christian [could keep] Negroes or slaves.” And she got into more trouble for saying that “there were thousands of white people wallowing in hell for their treatment to Negroes — and she did not care if there was many more.” That baptized woman talked free, even in slavery.
To be baptized is to enter the river, the “glad river” Will Campbell calls it, through which all the saints have trod. It is to belong to a people of liberation, captivated by a gospel which is often too radical for us. This liberating gospel sends the church into the world, confronting issues of race and gender, worship and spirituality, witness and mission, sin and salvation with revolutionary good news.
In this New Year let us return to the river, rediscovering the implications and complications of divine grace. To do that will require great patience and humility since we will probably never create a baptismal theology on which we can all readily agree. But like Martin Luther we can know that Christ has found us after all, at the river. Perhaps that must be good news enough, until all God’s people gather at the river that flows by the throne of God.